The idea of a metaverse became popular in 2021 at the instigation of Mark Zuckerberg and his company, Meta. Microsoft soon announced the creation of its own metaverse, Nike decided to sell digital clothes for the metaverse, and large IT companies began to invest in real estate in the Decentraland gaming metaverse and other sites. To date, several investors have purchased more than $5.5 million worth of virtual land in Decentraland. 

But how can smaller companies make the most of the emerging metaverse concept? Here are our top 4 occasions.

What is a Metaverse?

A Metaverse is a virtual space where people interact with digital objects and with each other. The experience of navigating and using Meta’s metaverse goes hand-in-hand with virtual reality technologies.

The Metaverse is a world in which the physical world overlaps with the virtual. Zoom, Google Meet, VR, and AR technologies are all included in this as a hybrid of social media, entertainment, work, and personal life. For example, you want to buy running shoes. You want to see how well they will go with the rest of your wardrobe, so you put on VR glasses. This is where the database of your clothes is already loaded along with a virtual mirror to evaluate the clothing combination.

Next, you have a corporate party planned. But it takes place at the company's main office, 2000 km from your current location. Thus you connect to the platform, where, in the form of a 3D avatar, you arrive at the corporate party in your new sneakers. In this way, you can walk around the location, play games, and communicate with colleagues who were unable to be physically present. Or rather, with their avatars.

This technology helps companies and team members all around the world stay in touch and have a fun time with colleagues despite COVID-19 restrictions and long distances.

Party.Space has already shared a number of stories about companies that decided to breathe new life into their corporate celebrations by hosting online events. 

Annual Corporate Celebration

In 2021, Epidemic Sound, the market-leading platform for restriction-free music headquartered in Stockholm, decided to celebrate a landmark achievement - their company’s billion-dollar capitalization and unicorn status. To conduct the meeting, Epidemic Sound innovators partnered with Party.Space.

It goes without saying that during COVID-19, it was especially difficult to imagine an event capable of gathering every employee from three different continents. Epidemic Sound has offices in Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. Management was dead set on the event being accessible to their entire team, regardless of their location. They also decided to omit Zoom or Google Meet for hosting the event. These are critical tools for telecommuting, but they do not provide an adequate experience for informal meetings as they are perceived by employees as tools for work and are not associated with a festive atmosphere.

With Party.Space, the event lasted 4 hours. All 375 guests got to hear about the company’s news, receive gifts by scanning their QR codes, participate in a musical quiz, discuss the most critical social issues, and share ideas and their significance for the company, their teams, and others.

Virtual Conference in the Microverse

In December 2021, a developer of telecommunications software, PortaOne, celebrated its 20th anniversary. Due to enforced COVID-19 measures and the emergence of a new strain, it became clear that hosting a conference for 100+ people offline wasn’t going to be possible. 

For this reason, PortaOne had to go online to celebrate and was happy to discover Party.Space.

To create an atmosphere with a truly live presence, Party.Space focused on a few key points:

• The conference hall had to have a sense of familiarity that resembled other venues from familiar professional events. Each "guest" had to be able to move around the room as a round avatar, sit at a table, and watch the speaker's presentation on the big screen.
• In addition to the sponsors' advertising banners, there were also poster buttons for viewing the agenda and scanning a QR code to leave feedback.
• Party.Space created an additional room, "Faces of PortaOne." The room showed photos of employees — technical writers, project managers, application support engineers, and others.

Attendees were thrilled and especially appreciated being able to have a single table discussion while listening to the speaker. Unlike Zoom, this feature significantly added a sense of live presence that is sorely lacking at online events while the pandemic was in full swing.

Virtual Product Launch Celebration 

TripStax is a platform that offers travel tech tools for travel management. Powered by “The Core,” a powerful central data processing architecture, TripStax has everything you need to enhance the customer experience and build new revenue streams. 

Spring 2022 is a special time for the entire TripStax team as they are set to launch their Tech Eco-System for Business Travel Management Companies. On March 29th, the company officially presented its product by hosting a virtual launch event in their own Metaverse using Party.Space. 

More than 100 attendees from different countries such as the UK, the US, India, Sweden, and Germany were able to join the virtual space and celebrate the company’s success. 

TripStax wanted to create a virtual launch event that delivered the following:

• easy access for people all over the world,
• interactive and engaging experience,
• custom-branded 3D metaverse that felt like their in-person events,
• hassle-free navigation throughout the metaverse. 

We created a custom metaverse with a rooftop space branded with TripStax’s corporate colors and logo. The key objective of the event was to commemorate the release of their new product. The liftoff of TripStax’s rocket was the finale that symbolized this launch.

During the event, guests enjoyed communicating, playing different board games, and listening to music. The participants enjoyed hassle-free event organization, easy-to-use platform features, and worldwide availability for guests, no matter their location. 

Studio-Office Anniversary in a 3D Virtual Space

The award-winning online game developer and publisher, Wargaming, also decided to celebrate its 7th anniversary by hosting an online team celebration. 

The requirements that the company had for Party.Space included:

• uninterrupted connection for three hundred people online,
• easy onboarding for the event, including a quick login with working credentials that don’t require registration,
• standard template of a 3D space, but it has to be custom-branded,
• participants have access to several activities at the same time.

With Party.Space, Wargaming got a premium space for the anniversary celebration with a reception area, the main concert hall, and several rooms for themed events. The entire area was branded in Wargaming's official colors and company logos. 

Each participant could watch and discuss the speeches, take part in a music quiz, play games, listen to a full-fledged DJ performance, and more. 

The event lasted for four hours, and the average session length among all the attendees was more than two hours. The participants were very positive about the conference. They couldn’t imagine that an event with this level of online immersion was possible at all.

In Conclusion

Hosting stunning online team parties or full-fledged corporate celebrations in metaverses has finally arrived. New Year parties, conferences, anniversaries, product launch celebrations, and many more online events are now so much more engaging for teams when hosted in the metaverse. 

With Party.Space, you get a 3D virtual world that is built around your ideas and focuses on your specific requirements. Examine the possibilities of the metaverse with Party.Space and enjoy a new level of online immersion.